Tape plugins or Actual Tape what exactly to listen for

[Lost to the Void]

Wow cool video. I need to check out the tracks later for sure . I heard the hiss and the difference in some of the highs,snare and piano transients. I thought I heard like a subtle bump of low mid range of kick maybe more harmonics.I need to go over that portion of the video again and might be easier to hear with the tracks. Is there anything else that was obvious to people. I thought it just sounded better but that is a pretty loose statement. Some of the a-bing in one portion of the video was hard to hear the difference and it tripped me out a little.

You can hear the low end pull together and tighten up pretty clearly too.

[dubdub]

Wow, that tape comparison is pretty drastic! I've heard some comparisons with high-end Studer machines and they were way more subtle than that.

Getting back to my deep dive into satin today.
Turns out, the "alive" fizzy sound I am talking about can be gotten pretty close to with Satin if you dig in with the service section.

The controls are very interdependent so it takes a lot of fiddle.

Pay most attention to Asperity, Crosstalk, Gapwidth, Azimuth, the circuit selection section too.

I`ve gotten an even better version of a G36 ish vibe than the setting I usually use.

So yeah, turns out, you can get very close to the vibe. It`s just the fizz in the top end I can`t get quite right. You can kinda fake it by running a Haas top end enhancement prior to the plugin.

Not asking for precise settings but how far do you push the azimuth? Isn't it pretty dangerous on the master considering it does L/R offset and phase fuckery?

And how hard are you hitting it overall usually? I've often underdriven Satin because it sounds more open but it seems like hitting around 0db VU on it, you get a lot more tape compression (I've never liked the clipping when you smash it, but it's still pretty clean at 0db VU). Seems like something you really have to mix into, if you push it a bit. I mean, even on the comparison with the real tape, I can imagine that if you did that on a mix that's already very dense and has very processed dynamics that the tape compression could end up sounding pretty terrible.

[Lost to the Void]

I was pushing to something like +6 yesterday and it sounded great, totally alive.

[Jambourgie]

Afternoon chaps. What are your thoughts about mastering to cassette? I have a couple of old cassette recorders that I seem to have acquired over the years, an 80's Denon and a 70's JVC. Recently I've been recording the odd track I've been working on at my studio on to cassette with the Denon, taking the tape home and listening to it later on the JVC. Just for fun really as an alternative to bouncing wavs onto a USB or something. I'm quite pleased with some of the results, a bit ghetto for sure, certainly not HiFi, but interesting all the same. The rubber bands in the JVC have obviously deteriorated so the speed of playback is all over the place...

[Lost to the Void]

I don't think you can master to cassette.
It was never used as a mastering medium, it has terrible fidelity and noise floor.
You can tune a master for cassette to compensate for it's inadequacies. I do that a lot for client's as people are putting out a lot of cassette these days.
It helps to know what make and model of machine is being used as the master duplicator so you can correct for the biases of that machine...
But cassette in general as a master source....god no.

[Jambourgie]

Ah I see, so in days gone by you'd what? Master to 2"tape and then to a duplicator for cassette or something?

Interesting. I do like the graunchy sound from my cassette experiments. Might just use it for creative effects/variations etc.

Cheers

[Jambourgie]

Are any of the Waves tape emulations useful for the master bus? I played around with Kramer recently but it just sounded a bit meh... think I need to cough up for Satin tbh.

[michi]

Wow, I am really freakin out a bit... the Chow Tape sounds amazing...! Thanks for this TIP!